About Me

I was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator and am now a journalist. I am the author of three New York Times bestselling books -- "How Would a Patriot Act" (a critique of Bush executive power theories), "Tragic Legacy" (documenting the Bush legacy), and With Liberty and Justice for Some (critiquing America's two-tiered justice system and the collapse of the rule of law for its political and financial elites). My fifth book - No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the US Surveillance State - will be released on April 29, 2014 by Holt/Metropolitan.

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Friday, September 22, 2006

America to legalize torture

(updated below)

My first post today at Salon focuses on what, in my view, is the only genuinely important fact one needs to know about the "compromise" reached by the glorious leaders of our Ruling Party: namely, the President had only one objective with these "negotiations," which was to ensure that the CIA's torture program could continue, and that goal has been fulfilled in its entirety.

UPDATE: Has anyone seen the Democratic Party anywhere? I think it's time to issue an Amber Alert for them because they have been missing for quite some time now and we're really beginning to worry.

My second Salon post concerns the tactics used to depict our dissident, independent Republican saviors -- the principled and righteous Senators McCain, Graham and Warner -- as the moderate, reasonable, serious, balanced leaders even as they advocated, and ultimately endorsed, an indescribably radical and extremist proposal. The danger -- one could even say the inevitably -- is self-evident that this same sad dynamic will repeat itself in order to ensure enactment of a warrantless surveillance bill.

UPDATE II: I have a plea (directed to myself as much as anyone) to declare dead -- forever -- the Myth of the Independent, Dissident Republican Senator and bury it in a coffin deep in the ground where it belongs. At this point, I think encountering the Lochness Monster is more likely than finding a genuinely independent Republican Senator willing to impose meaningful limits of any kind on the President.